GYAAR Contest Support Survey Results: What Do Developers Seek? Part 2
Hello everyone!
In the previous post, we shared our findings after asking our X followers what kind of support they’d like to see!
As we saw in part 1, there are many people looking forward to getting marketing-focused support.
For comparison, we asked the same questions to five Japanese teams among the first GYAAR Contest winners. They have been making use of the various types of support we provide for about one year!
Questions:
- What did you have the most expectations for other than the support funding?
- What was the most valuable support you received?
- What are your thoughts on marketing-focused support, which has gotten the most votes on X?
Respondents:
・Takao Furukawa from BUBBLE GUM
・Ryo Kobuchi
・Charehito from KAKUKAKU GAMES
・kinjo
・TomozoP
And this is what they said!
① What did you have the most expectations for other than the support funding?
✨#1✨ Marketing-focused support
✨#1✨ Just the support funding
✨#3✨ Regular feedback from company creators
*The top two had the same number of votes so there are two #1s.
② What was the most valuable support you received?
In a single answer poll on X, 25% voted for sharing of development know-how and technical insight, 16.3% for lending of development equipment and environment, 10.9% voted for regular feedback from company creatives, and 47.8% voted for marketing-focused support.
Meanwhile, we conducted the same poll among the award winners mentioned above, and 80% voted for regular feedback from company creatives and 20% voted for marketing-focused support.
③ What are your thoughts on marketing-focused support, which has gotten the most votes on X?
▼Feedback on the current situation
・Support that helps us accomplish things that wouldn’t have been possible alone, such as interviews or demoing at session at the GYAAR Studio Base, is extremely appealing to small developers.
・I am very grateful that the game was also shown in overseas events.
・We appreciate the support for exhibiting at various events such as the Tokyo Game Show.
・I was very happy to have the opportunity for exposure at the Tokyo Game Show and gamescom.
・We are very grateful to be able to demo the game at events.
▼Thoughts about the future
・It would be great to have opportunities to learn how to promote overseas and get advice tailored to each title.
・We need to promote the release of the product through social networking sites as a team in addition to exhibiting at events and would appreciate getting any advice related to that.
・It would be fun to hold interesting or unique events.
From the survey results from X as well as from our award winners, we had a think about what this all means.
Both surveys showed that the marketing-focused support had the highest expectations.
We can infer that the reason for the interest could be that the things they’ve tried haven’t been effective, there are limits to what one can do, they are not knowledgeable/proficient in this area, or they simply want to have someone else take care of it. Indie game creators, naturally, develop games and can come up with solutions when faced with development-related problems. However, marketing is a different and unknown world compared to game development, and we think that’s a big reason why they expressed their desire to receive support in that area.
Support from Bandai Namco Studios will mainly be in the area of game development, and we will continue to focus on that as well. Additionally, along with our co-hosts of this contest, Bandai Namco Entertainment, as well as our management partner, Phoenixx, we would like to also provide strong marketing support to promote your works to the world.
One more thing!
We found that our award winners find it extremely valuable to be able to receive regular feedback from creators through demo sessions.
This is significant not only in terms of receiving feedback from people who are also developing games, but also in terms of networking with other game creators. Since indie game creators usually work alone or in small groups, we believe there are cases where they can become closed-off. In that sense, being able to connect and network with other creators will expand the scope of knowledge sharing and build a community to hype each other up.
Here are some award winner interviews where they also talk about their thoughts on the support they received.
Hatanaka: We work together, but at the same time we’re also rivals.
Kobuchi: We are all in different circumstances, different development phases, and working on different things, so we’re more like good buddies rather than direct competitors. I think having this kind of competition fosters a good environment.
TomozoP: …… We’re the horses in human derby.
That being said, the GYAAR Contest management team would like to continue to provide and evolve our support to facilitate connection-building, such as demo sessions and online communities.
That concludes the survey results.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and our observations may not apply to everyone, so we will continue to take a multifaceted perspective and take everyone into consideration. We hope that we can keep hyping up the indie game scene with you!
Thank you for reading!
